Dame Vivienne Westwood has handed on the age of 81. Though no official reason behind loss of life has been made public, a press release launched by her label says she died surrounded by household and mates in London. She spent her last days creating, designing, and writing.
Westwood will at all times be remembered as each a champion and cultivator of the type of costume related to London’s ’70s punk rock scene. The designer not solely led the aesthetics of that motion, she additionally managed to parlay that notoriety into considered one of Britain’s definitive vogue labels. Initially popularized by bands just like the Intercourse Pistols, her frocks would come to be worn on the pink carpets of severals Oscars, Met Galas, and worldwide movie festivals, together with a number of royal weddings.
Westwood was born Vivienne Swire in Tintwistle, Cheshire to a working class household. She feared her household’s humble financial state of affairs would stop her from pursuing a profession within the arts, and she or he dropped out of artwork college after one semester. As a substitute, she labored in a manufacturing facility whereas attending trainer’s faculty. Later, she’d make and promote her personal jewellery whereas educating major college. An early marriage (from which she gained the final identify of Westwood) faltered after she met Malcolm McLaren, an artwork college grad with a penchant for each provocation and entrepreneurship. They opened a boutique and clothes restore retailer in London’s Chelsea neighborhood initially known as Let It Rock, however rechristened as merely SEX in 1974. Embellished in graffiti and hen wire, the shop bought fetishwear alongside the couple’s unique designs. Round that point, McLaren started managing a younger rock band named The Strand, however satisfied the group to rename themselves The Intercourse Pistols in hopes of selling the shop. The remaining is historical past. Intercourse Pistols turned the London punk scene’s marquee band, and SEX its all-but-official clothes shop.
McLaren and Westwood started creating correct collections—and finally renamed the shop, but once more, to World’s Finish. However their private {and professional} relationship led to 1985 after McLaren moved to Los Angeles.
Westwood carried on beneath her personal identify, and her unique fixation on subculture vogue gave strategy to a subversive tackle the types of the upperclass. The components was a success, and helped Westwood set up a worldwide vogue model. Amongst Westwood’s most memorable designs: Carrie Bradshaw’s wedding ceremony costume from Intercourse and the Metropolis’s first movie, Pharrell William’s memorable (and memable) outsized buffalo hat, the the corset Gwen Stefani wore in No Doubt’s early “Spiderwebs” video, together with Dita Von Teese’s deep-purple wedding ceremony robe.
No succession plan has been introduced for the model, however it’s broadly assumed that Westwood’s second husband, Andreas Kronthaler—who has served because the designer’s artistic accomplice since they married in 1992—will keep on the label.